It's time for action regarding Chinese economic espionage

The U.S. government needs a more aggressive and effective response to Chinese economic espionage than simply indicting five top Chinese military officials who will never see the inside of a U.S. courtroom.

The five are senior members of the People’s Liberation Army operating under Internet pseudonyms such as “UglyGorilla.” The PLA is as much a government commercial and industrial enterprise as it is a military.

Indeed, cyber researchers have identified the exact unit of the PLA, Unit 61398, known as the “Comment Crew,” and its headquarters, a heavily guarded 12-story building near Shanghai’s airport. The unit has been described as perhaps the most prolific hacker of U.S. and other Western countries’ trade secrets, intellectual property, strategic plans and internal communications.

The 56-page indictment accuses the Chinese officers of hacking U.S. Steel and Alcoa, respectively the country’s largest steel and aluminum producers; Westinghouse Electric, our largest maker of nuclear power plants; Allegheny Technologies, a maker of specialized metals; and SolarWorld, a successful maker of solar products; and the United Steelworkers union, an aggressive opponent of imports of Chinese steel and steel products.

These, however, may be only a tiny sampling of the universe of Chinese economic espionage. A classified report cited by The New York Times says as more than 3,000 American companies were targets of cyber snooping.

There is a murky line recognized by the U.S. and other governments between “legitimate” cyberespionage — trying to determine another country’s positions in advance of trade and diplomatic negotiations and defense-related national security, for example — and illegitimate for-profit espionage, where a country spies to gain commercial advantage for its state-run and private companies.

However murky that line, the Chinese clearly crossed it and did so out of what now clearly appears to be a matter of national policy.

The United States has a clear response, if it hasn’t done so already: Divert the National Security Agency from eavesdropping, other than what is legitimately necessary, to snooping on China’s commercial interests and let the U.S. Department of Commerce distribute the findings to U.S. companies, thus leveling the playing field with their Chinese competitors.

The Chinese government vigorously disputes the charges, calling them “ungrounded and absurd” and “based on fabricate facts.” To which FBI Director James Comey challenged Chinese officials to come over to an American courtroom and “embarrass us by forcing us to put up or shut up and we’ll put up.”

Since there is no extradition treaty with China, there is fat chance of that happening.